the first song, whose awful theme records
The spirits whelm’d in woe. Earnest I look’d
Into the depth, that open’d to my view,
Moisten’d with tears of anguish, and beheld
A tribe, that came along the hollow vale,
In silence weeping: such their step as walk
Quires, chanting solemn litanies, on earth.
As on them more direct mine eye descends,
Each wonderously seem’d to be reversed
At the neck-bone, so that the countenance
Was from the reins averted; and because
None might before him look, they were compell’d
To advance with backward gait. Thus one perhaps
Hath been by force of palsy clean transposed,
But I ne’er saw it nor believe it so.
Now, reader! think within thyself, so God
Fruit of thy reading give thee! how I long
Could keep my visage dry, when I beheld
Near me our form distorted in such guise,
That on the hinder parts fallen from the face
The tears down-streaming roll’d. Against a rock
I leant and wept, so that my guide exclaim’d:
“What, and art thou, too, witless as the rest?
Here pity most doth show herself alive,
When she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his,
Who with Heaven’s judgment in his passion strives?
Raise up thy head, raise up, and see the man
Before whose eyes[138] earth gaped in Thebes, when all
Cried out ‘Amphiaraüs, whither rushest?
Why leavest thou the war?’ He not the less
Fell ruining far as to Minos down,
Whose grapple none eludes. Lo! how he makes
The breast his shoulders; and who once too far
Before him wish’d to see, now backward looks,
And treads reverse his path. Tiresias note,
Who semblance changed, when woman he became
Of male, through every limb transform’d; and then
Once more behoved him with his rod to strike
The two entwining serpents, ere the plumes,
That mark’d the better sex, might shoot again.
“Aruns,[139] with rere his belly facing, comes.
Luni’s mountains ’midst the marbles white,
Where delves Carrara’s hind, who wons beneath,
A cavern was his dwelling, whence the stars
And main-sea whide in boundless view he held.
“The next, whose loosen’d tresses overspread
Her bosom, which thou seest not (for each hair
On that side grows) was Manto, she who search’d
Through many regions, and at length her seat
Fix’d in my native land: whence a short space
My words detain thy audience. When her sire
From life departed, and in servitude
The city dedicate to Bacchus mourn’d,
Long time she went a wanderer through the world.
Aloft in Italy’s delightful land
A lake there lies, at foot of that proud Alp
That o’er the Tyrol locks Germania in,
Its name Benacus, from whose ample breast
A thousand springs, methinks, and more, between
Camonica and Garda, issuing forth,
Water the Apennine. There is a spot[140]
At midway of that lake, where he who bears
Of Trento’s flock the pastoral staff, with him
Of Brescia, and the Veronese, might each
Passing that way his benediction give.
A garrison of goodly site and strong
Peschiera[141] stands, to awe with front opposed
The Bergamese and Brescian, whence the shore
More slope each way descends. There, whatsoe’er
Benacus’ bosom holds not, tumbling o’er
Down falls, and winds a river flood beneath
Through the green pastures. Soon as in his course
The stream makes head, Benacus then no more
They call the name, but Mincius, till at last
Reaching Governo, into Po he falls.
Not far his course hath run, when a wide flat
It finds, which overstretching as a marsh
It covers, pestilent in summer oft.
Hence journeying, the savage maiden saw
Midst of the fen a territory waste
And naked of inhabitants. To shun
All human converse, here she with her slaves,
Plying her arts, remain’d, and liv’d, and left
Her body tenantless. Thenceforth the tribes,
Who round were scatter’d, gathering to that place,
Assembled; for its strength was great, enclosed
